A sale by a goods or services provider to a buyer using a charge card typically involves receiving an order, generating an invoice, requiring payment, effectuating fulfillment of the order, and settling any associated accounts. This multi-step process tends to become more complicated if the goods and services provider is from a business enterprise comprising several business units, each providing particular goods and services. A customer may have needs for product or service offerings of more than one of the business units, each with its own practices, a cumbersome proposition for the customer as well as the provider. Even assuming ordering were centralized, the particulars of managing and delivering on an order, and of managing and settlement of accounts for such order, are not generally uniform. In the automation industry, no such centralized ordering using a charge card is possible over a network, either by telephone or computer, despite significant, but previously unmet, demand for a system that can handle automation goods and services orders on behalf of a plurality of business units of an enterprise that sells them. For example, it is not possible to transact business with the well-known Siemens Automation & Drives SIMATIC card across different business units of a worldwide enterprise. Furthermore, the SIMATIC card does not provide access to a customer's account over the internet, nor does it provide management of one's own account by way of presenting an account statement, nor capability to transfer funds within the account. There is also an existing, but unmet, demand to do so through a common interface, using a common card, and operating across a variety of currencies so that global or geographically remote automation customers can order in a simple fashion, and so that settlement not only of customer accounts, but of business unit accounts, is also facilitated.